While it’s not exactly news when former President Bill Clinton fails to tell the truth (after all, the first count on which he was impeached concerned his lying under oath in grand jury testimony), a whopper he hauled out at the Consumer Electronics show last Wednesday concerning gun violence was so over the top that it deserves far more notice than most of the establishment press will give it.

One of the reports on what Clinton said was at Thursday morning’s New York Daily News. As an aside, the paper’s online article looks more like what one would find at issues advocacy blogs than what you would hope to see at a real newspaper’s web site; this particular item pleads with readers within its text to “CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE DAILY NEWS ONLINE PETITION TO BAN ASSAULT WEAPONS,” and the petition itself appears below Kristen Lee’s report. Lee relayed what Clinton said at the Consumer Electronics show on January 9:

Former President Bill Clinton pushes for stricter gun control during Consumer Electronics Show speech

Former President Bill Clinton was a surprise guest on Wednesday at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where he seized his opportunity to make a push for greater gun control during a speech about technology.

“I grew up in this hunting culture, but this is nuts,” the Arkansas native said. “Why does anybody need a 30 round clip for a gun? Why does anybody need one of those things that carries 100 bullets?”

… During Clinton’s speech on Wednesday, the former president seemed to favor reinstating the federal assault weapons that expired 10 years after he signed into law in 1994.

“Half of all mass killings in the United States have occurred since the assault weapons ban expired in 2005,” he said. “Half of all of them in the history of the country.”

… Grant Duwe, director of research and evaluation at the Minnesota Department of Corrections, assembled a data set going back 100 years for a 2007 book titled, “Mass Murder in the United States: A History.” He used the FBI Supplementary Homicide Reports, which date from 1976, and then supplemented the FBI reports with news reports (principally The New York Times) dating from 1900.

Duwe says the Times turned out to be a relatively reliable guide for mass murders across the country, since much of the post-1976 information also turned up in the contemporaneous FBI reports. As far as he knows, he is the only person who has assembled such a historical data set.

According to his research, he has identified 156 mass public shootings in the United States in the past 100 years.

Duwe defines a mass public shooting as an incident in which four or more victims are killed publicly with guns within 24 hours — in the workplace, schools, restaurants and other public places — excluding shootings in connection with crimes such as robbery, drugs or gangs. (Note that this would exclude a number of “mass murders” that sometimes get lumped into the data, such as the Beltway sniper who killed 10 people over a three-week period in 2002.)

Since 2005, when the assault ban expired, there have been 32 such mass public shootings, including seven in 2012, Duwe said. So that’s just over 20 percent of all mass public shootings, which is much less than Clinton’s 50 percent.

… It is important to note that these are raw figures; the United States had far fewer people 50 or 100 years ago.

… We ran this data past a spokesman for Clinton, but he declined to comment or offer an explanation for where the former president got his facts. That always makes us suspicious.

Note that the Beltway Sniper murders occurred during the decade when the “assault weapons” ban was in place.

Therefore, Bill Clinton assertion is wrong — by a factor of 2.5 (50% divided by 20%) — even before considering that Duwe’s research excludes about 120 years of America’s existence.

Kessler further notes that Mother Jones, using data only dating back to 1982, i.e., excluding 200 years of U.S. history, was only able to get to 40 percent.

Kessler, who has an annoying habit of being an easy grader on demonstrably false leftist claims, gave Clinton’s statement only “three Pinocchios” (“Significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions”) with a pathetic excuse: “Given the fuzziness of the data and questions about definitions, we are going to cut Clinton a bit of slack in the final ruling.”

Horse manure. Clinton’s reckless claim is a four-Pinocchio “whopper” (Kessler’s definition). Yet Kessler appears to be virtually alone in the establishment press in even challenging it.

12 Comments

This is coming from Bill Clinton, Janet Reno, Eric Holder et al who killed 83 unarmed men, women and children in Waco Texas using CS gas (he burned them alive) that is banned in international warfare. We have the biggest bunch of paranoid psychos running this country. And they are all satanists.

[...] of All Mass Killings in the U.S. Have Occurred Since the Assault Weapons Ban Expired in 2005′ January 14, 2013 bizzyblog.com BizzyBlog No comments Bill Clinton Whopper: ‘Half of All Mass Killings in the [...]

What? You think they are Holy Spiriting worshipping, Bible loving, Jesus Christ exalting Christians? I think you need to spend more time reading your King James Bible and then you would be able to discern this better. And, Hillary already admitted to worshiping Satan (Lucifer) in her college thesis.

Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God

I never said they were the things you mentioned. There is no reason for you to believe that I did, or that I believe what you seem to think I believe.

Credible links would be nice — in fact, at this point, required. I will read them if provided.

Alinsky dedicated his Rules for Radicals to Satan. If there’s evidence that HRC admitted to worshiping Satan (Lucifer) in her college thesis, I haven’t seen any mention of it, though many have read it.

But one thing all these mass murders DID have in common… they were committed by young men who were on strong anti-depressants and other psychotropic drugs. Drugs that are known to have suicidal and violent side effects. If the Govt should go after anyone it shouldn’t go after NRA…they should go after the AMA and Big Pharma! And the parents who allow their kids to be poisoned by this sh*t.

I understand this article is meant to expose false or exaggerated claims…however 20% of all mass killings or 32 by your count since 2005 certainly should raise an eyebrow. Are we content at calling it a coincidence or should we not find ways to stop the access of guns in the hands of those that commit these atrocities? What about the fact that no one is talking about the mental stability of the killers or what medications (prescription I would wager) these killers are on? Seems like Clinton misspoke exaggerated…whatever…now what?

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